A salacious look inside a real estate deal gone wrong? I have to admit, I was pretty excited about “Backstabbed,” a Lifetime movie that premiered Sept. 3.

I mean, just read the movie plot from the Lifetime website: “When a struggling housewife poses as a potential buyer to help her boss close real estate transactions, she discovers her boss will do anything to close a deal — even murder.”

There have been several accounts in real life real estate where people have posed as buyers to check for code violations, start a rival supply business in New Zealand and burglarize homes. There have also been countless suspicious situations and even a well-publicized murder.

Instead, Lifetime chose to air a fictitious story about an extreme situation that doesn’t seem to have been based on any real-life counterpart at all.

I can’t help but wonder what that does for the reputation of real estate and real estate agents. It’s a little sad to me that an opportunity existed — during Realtor safety month, no less — to produce a cautionary tale that could help buyers, sellers and agents be safer … but instead, we got “Backstabbed.”